Which team will win between Italy and England? Anticipation's growing for the Euro 2020 final that will be held on Sunday at Wembley, London UK.

These are the two teams indicated by bettors as the big favorites to win the European Championship since France was eliminated.

Italy, after having won all three matches in its group, struggled in the round of 16 against Austria, while its success against Belgium was a bit clearer. In the semifinals, against Spain, it was an authentic battle that was resolved with penalties.

England, on the other hand, against Denmark, got the only goal of the entire competition. The Southgate's boys suffered a bit too much in 120' but then found a second goal with the usual HurryKane.

Looking at the betting odds, England is slightly favored over Italy, but the prediction is undoubtedly open, even if playing in a stadium like Wembley full of English fans, where Italians should be less than 10,000, could be a determining factor.

Let's crowdsource the bet for the regular 90 minutes: what is going to be the end result after 90 minutes?
Your move!

Super Mario isn’t the only one who consumes mushrooms to get more coins.

A German investor who made billions off of Bitcoin and other ventures has shared the secret to his success: tripping on mushrooms.

Shrooms were “the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” said Christian Angermayer, 43, who’s made boatloads investing in new-frontier enterprises from cryptocurrency and space travel to life extension, Bloomberg reported.

Isn't it hilarious? The Caribbean, mushrooms (they're legal in the Caribbean) and Bitcoin could become a thing after this news.
Don't start selling your bitcoins for mushrooms on the dark market now, please.

How to explain bitcoin? As I said a couple of weeks ago, it’s hard to dismiss the digital currency as a classic investment bubble because — unlike any of the other historical manias which have seen similarly extreme gains in price — it has formed a series of bubbles, which have burst and then reinflated. Bubbles aren’t supposed to do this: They are booms grown so large that they cannot gently deflate and must burst, never to return.

Bitcoin has many of the symptoms of a speculative mania, led by the sheer excitement it inspires in its believers. But it’s hard to say what the digital asset’s value should be. Like gold, value is in the eye of the beholder. It has no intrinsic value, and while the same is true of banknotes, it has no government standing behind it.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-09/bitcoin-is-displacing-gold-as-an-inflation-hedge

Very interesting article IMHO. Bitcoin's performance over the last year is directly aligned with movements in bond yields where whe these last ones rise, so does bitcoin, implying that BTC benefits directly form the "reflation trade" or the belief that inflation is actually coming.

[Secure]

Crypto.org Chain is a public, open-source and permissionless blockchain - a fully decentralized network with high speed and low fees, designed to be a public good that helps drive mass adoption of blockchain technology through use cases like Payments, DeFi and NFTs.

Why Crypto.org Chain

Secure
The Chain is built on state-of-the-art blockchain technology and designed to be fault-tolerant

Instant & Low-Cost
Transactions are instant and deterministic, confirmed with minimal fees

Permissionless
The Chain is an open-source project and welcomes any validator partners or code contributors

Open Ecosystem
Welcoming to and supported by innovative projects, including Payment, DeFi and NFT initiatives.


So Crypto.com wants to enter the platform blockchain business and battle against BNB, ETH, DOT; ATOM, ADA and all the others.

This new chain is going to be based on Tendermint a byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol (already used by Cosmos).

What do you think of it?

https://crypto.org/
https://crypto.org/docs/

Bitcoin (BTC) was higher on Monday at around $33,000, rebounding after a 9.9% drop in the seven days through Sunday, the biggest weekly drop since August.

“Bitcoin is seeing some consolidation itself after surviving another run at $30,000,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst for the London-based foreign exchange brokerage Oanda, wrote Monday in an investor update. “A move back above $35,000 may start to change the conversation but the trend is against it these last few weeks and a move lower still looks more likely.”

Ether (ETH), the main cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, rose early Monday to a new all-time high price of $1,476.12. Ether, which is the second-biggest digital asset by market value after bitcoin, has nearly doubled just in January alone.

https://www.coindesk.com/first-mover-bitcoin-weak-ethereum-all-time-high

I like when senior market analysts spread their wisdom about bitcoin price movements, they seem to always know what's happening. 
Joking apart, there's an interesting analysis on the difference which is building between US/Asia trading patterns

Comparing bitcoin’s price moves during Asia daytime hours and American hours (split into 12 hours each) shows a clear pattern of relentless buying during the North American trading hours and selling in Asia, mainly by large investors (known as whales) and cryptocurrency miners.
The pattern emerged following the March 2020 price crash and had endured until two weeks ago when bitcoin reached record highs above $41,900. Since then, the strength during U.S. hours has lost momentum, QCP Capital noted in its Telegram channel.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde called on Wednesday for global regulation of Bitcoin, saying the digital currency had been used for money laundering activities in some instances and that any loopholes needed to be closed.

https://www.reuters.com/article/crypto-currency-ecb/reuters-next-ecbs-lagarde-calls-for-regulating-bitcoins-funny-business-idUSL1N2JO0RM

Madame Christine Lagarde is afraid of Bitcoin: good! That is how I read her rants and if I was a bitcoin entrepreneur I would give the shit back at her!

Today I want to talk about code.
I know, this newsletter is for professional investors and not developers – why aren’t we talking about price? Don’t worry, we will further down. But things are evolving with Bitcoin (BTC, +2.34%) technology that are worth keeping an eye on. While these changes have little to do with the short-term price movements, they are likely to play a significant role in bitcoin’s long-term value proposition.
Two things happened this week to make this top-of-mind: a new development funding source was announced, and progress is being made on a particularly ambitious protocol upgrade.
Before we go into more detail about why these are significant, let’s look at why Bitcoin development matters.

Source https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-protocol-development-incentives-diversity

Talking about code to investors  Stimulating article from Coindesk. Even Taproot gets a mention (data about the upgrade is a bit behind but that's ok).

[Please note]

Please note that the following article is under a paywall. If you are wondering why I am posting it, well, this was on the WSJ homepage.
It doesn't happen every day.
Bitcoin climbed back above $18,000 last week to flirt with record levels, a spectacular rally driven by a new group of buyers seeking the opportunity for big profits.

The digital currency traded as high as $18,965 on Friday, according to CoinDesk, about 4% below its all-time high of $19,783 set in December 2017. It has surged more than 50% in the past month alone.

Source https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-trades-again-near-record-driven-by-new-group-of-buyers-11606127401

You may have heard about institutional investors finally embracing bitcoin, billionaires going crazy about owning BTC, public companies owning them as a reserve asset, etc.
The last time a poll like this was made the end result was that in 2018 only 304 forum users voted YES while 300 voted no.

As 2020 comes to an end, were you able to treat yourselves with 1 full bitcoin?
If you like explain to others how have you reached this threshold: also, if you feel like sharing it, tell us why you were not able to do that.

Give your honest point of view and please bear in mind I will not tolerate any bullying here: don't judge what others have done wrong, as the real point of this thread is to let everyone aware that this can be a turning point in our lives and owning 1 bitcoin could be a game-changer soon.

So, if you hold one bitcoin hold on to it; if you don't try to do your best to reach one, but securely store and manage what you currently have.

Good luck to you all!


The poll will close in 60 days.

[More and more serious investors and companies are accumulating bitcoins causing a shortage on the spot exchanges. Good times are coming and the bears know it!]

Remember the dissapointment of the first day with volume of several bitcoins? Well, this escalated quite fast to the levels of the biggest exchanges! And this is still unnoticed among the other 'hot' news about defi and microshares. Defi is having currently around 100 000BTC locked into smart contracts and rising of course. More and more serious investors and companies are accumulating bitcoins causing a shortage on the spot exchanges. Good times are coming and the bears know it! Of course they will fight desperately between 10K and 20K to be able to buy cheap coins as long as possible. But when the ATH is breached, the real FOMO will start. Then the SEC morons like Jay Clayton will realise that invetstors do not need their approval to invest in Bitcoin. The obstacles they've built are not applied for Bitcoin.

Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego just declared 10% of his portfolio is now tied up in bitcoin.

Announced in a tweet on Wednesday, Mexico’s second-wealthiest man responded to questions that “many people” ask him about bitcoin (BTC, +2.20%), saying: “YES. I have 10% of my liquid portfolio invested.”

“Bitcoin protects the citizen from government expropriation,” Pliego added as he recommended “El Patron Bitcoin” – a book that is “the best and most important to understand #Bitcoin.”

Source https://www.coindesk.com/mexican-billionaire-bitcoin-portfolio

They are coming for your bitcoin, are you willing to concede and waste your treasure below anything less than we can possibly make?
Preserving/increasing wealth is a job in itself that requires skills and dedication, otherwise easy comes easy goes.
That being said, I don't think the average OG Hodler would easily fall into the above mistakes. (quoting bitserve)
Hold

Adding his sonorous voice to the chorus of renowned investors talking about bitcoin recently, hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller stated on a CNBC interview this week that he believed bitcoin could perform better than gold.
“I own many, many more times gold than I own bitcoin, but frankly if the gold bet works, the bitcoin bet will probably work better because it’s thinner and more illiquid and has a lot more beta to it.“
This is worth diving into a bit, because the statement is good news for the industry, but it is not the bullish affirmation that it initially seems.
This is not Druckenmiller saying that bitcoin has a better value proposition than gold, or that it has a harder cap or that decentralization is the way to go.
No, this is Druckenmiller saying that bitcoin has more upside because of its market inefficiencies. Let that sink in: The very characteristics that many investors have cited as barriers to investment are what a renowned investor believes will award bitcoin a better performance.

Source https://www.coindesk.com/druckenmiller-bitcoin-what-he-really-said

BlockSeer, a blockchain analytics firm, has launched a private beta version of the BlockSeer Mining Pool, a mining pool that censors certain transactions. And it’s not without controversy.
While BlockSeer’s mining pool is still in its private beta, if this sparks a trend, it could make it very difficult for the regular user to use Bitcoin. Since transactions can’t be made without a miner choosing to put them in a block, Bitcoin miners and pools wield a lot of power. Critics argue this, if this became the norm, it could cause a problem for Bitcoin.

More at https://decrypt.co/48025/bitcoin-mining-pool-that-censors-transactions-sparks-debate

This will turn bad. As Fluffypony put it "It’s only a matter of time till most Bitcoin mining pools are forced to do this transaction filtering. Might be time to dust off p2pool + focus on Stratum v2 support for pools. Also worth noting that adding more privacy to Bitcoin would prevent this."

Michael Saylor is the CEO of business intelligence company MicroStrategy, which is heavily invested in Bitcoin. Today, Saylor suggested Bitcoin and gold aren’t so similar, contrary to the "digital gold" narrative. When Bitcoin is fully realized as an asset class, it will come at gold's expense, he claims.

More here https://decrypt.co/47813/bitcoin-gold-cannot-coexist-microstrategy-ceo

I wonder if Michael Saylor is on stealth-mode on this forum.

According to a recent report by LongHash, public companies in the U.S. now own $10 billion worth of Bitcoin – something that can be accredited to increased investment as well as the cryptocurrency’s rise in price over the month of October.
While the general consensus regarding more institutions getting interested in Bitcoin is fairly positive, the report noted that, “In the short to medium term, the positives far outweigh the negatives. But in the next decade or so, if Bitcoin eventually evolves into a global currency atop a store of value, it then could pose certain security risks.”

More here https://eng.ambcrypto.com/is-it-all-good-news-when-institutions-invest-in-bitcoin/

LongHash report here https://shorturl.at/dxST3

The hunt for a hedge is on.
With the Federal Reserve keeping its benchmark interest rate near zero on Thursday and more fiscal stimulus on the horizon as a final presidential election outcome draws near, there’s a lot for investors to consider when buying into certain asset classes, one trader said.
“You still have the S&P 500 trading under recent highs. The 10-year yield, more or less, has been sideways,” JC O’Hara, chief market technician at MKM Partners, told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Thursday.
“I’m actually looking at another asset class that I think will work tremendously well within this current environment, and that’s bitcoin,” he said. “What I like about bitcoin is it’s actually breaking out.”
Cryptocurrencies tend to act well going into and coming out of elections on the whole, but bitcoin’s technicals are particularly strong this time around, O’Hara said.
“When we looked at a chart of bitcoin, we could see a very strong technical setup here that we believe is setting up for further upside,” he said.

More here https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/bitcoin-gold-trading-low-interest-rates-and-a-friendly-fed.html

As we said many times everywhere on the forum, now every trader in town is trying to find its luck trading bitcoin. The difference for me is that I don't think Bitcoin will go up because of some TA but more because of what it can offer as a protocol and store of value.

How money is made thanks to our yellow friend 

Quick Take

• Square said Thursday that sold $1.63 billion in bitcoin through its Cash App during the third quarter of 2020
• The gross profit figure was $32 million for the period, per the firm’s Q3 data release
• Since launching bitcoin purchase capabilities at the start of 2018, Square has now sold more than $3.4 billion in total sales

Backing out the cost to acquire the bitcoin, Square made $32 million in gross profit on its bitcoin sales, up more than 15 times since last year and good for more than 4% of total company gross profit.
"Bitcoin revenue and gross profit benefited from an increase in bitcoin actives and volume per customer," the firm said in its report.

More https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/83748/square-earnings-q3-cash-app-bitcoin

Two key on-chain indicators show that whales and retail investors, in general, are not actively selling Bitcoin. First, the BTC estimated leverage ratio shows that trades in the derivatives market are not decreasing. This shows that investors are not proactively closing their positions or trades amid the uncertainty around the U.S. presidential election.
However, after the election results come out, the high BTC estimated leverage ratio poses a risk of increased volatility. Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, told Cointelegraph: “The BTC Estimated Leverage Ratio on derivative exchanges is increasing till the election day. It might cause high volatility on BTC price due to cascade liquidations.”
Ju explained: “Whales in US spot exchanges are not active for now. Spot Exchanges’ Inflow Mean is the average amount of bitcoin deposited on the spot exchanges, including US exchanges such as Coinbase Pro, Gemini, Bittrex, and others. It’s helpful to see the short-term dumping risk of whales.”

More here https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-whales-tread-water-and-hodl-despite-recent-btc-price-drop

The 2020 U.S. election has put the country on course for its highest turnout in a century—with campaigns and candidates dominating headlines.

The bitcoin price has soared in the run-up to the election, adding a massive 30% through October and riding a raft of positive news to hit highs not seen since early 2018.

Now, with Democratic challenger Joe Biden finding a solid lead in national polls over incumbent Donald Trump, bitcoin traders and investors are braced as candidates head into the last day of campaigning, with global markets already on edge.

More here https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/11/02/bitcoin-is-braced-for-a-us-election-earthquake-this-week/

I am very curious about how the US election may impact Bitcoin's price activity. It seems markets are waiting for it.

As the U.S. stock market enters earnings season, analysts explain how Bitcoin could perform after earnings and the presidential election.
A drop to $12,000 is unlikely, as the “upside momentum” of Bitcoin is simply too strong, with fundamentals backing it up. Bitcoin has seen unexpected price swings in the past, especially during bull markets. Volumes, open interest and overall trading activity increase, raising the probability for short-term volatility spikes.

Read more @ https://cointelegraph.com/news/back-on-track-us-macro-events-unlikely-to-fully-derail-bitcoin-price-gains

Edit: corrected a typo thanks to buwaytress

Former Goldman Sachs employee Raoul Pal predicts the possible migration of gold investors to Bitcoin (BTC) while MicroStrategy CEO reveals that he owns 17,332 BTC which he bought at a price of $9,882.

https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/gold-investors-will-migrate-to-bitcoin-microstrategy-ceo-has-17732-btc/

If a tiny amount of gold bugs will start investing in bitcoin the next bull run is going to be epic.